Anniversary
by lyner
Summary: Monica and Chandler's first anniversary.


Hellu. This time I wrote something properly orthodox, after my first 2 fics of the unsettling sort that I published :p I haven't written a new Friends piece in at least a year or more, so I hope this one is to your satisfaction.I'm not sure how i like this one. (I was going to write about the lottery issue in the pov of the pigeon that destroyed everything but… oh nvm. crumples and throws out window)

I humbly give to you instead,

Friends: A proper, normal, the usual-kinda-thing, one piece, Fan Fiction Episode Set in some time before the end. (I think there's something wrong with me. It's so very short.)

**Anniversary**

He straightened his collar. There was a strangeness in the air. A new breeze, a new light and levity. And a hand, playing with its fingers and messing with his threads, hanging over his shoulder. Hello there, darling.

He reached to his shoulder and tugged on the beautiful fingers, bringing a woman into view. A stunning, woman that could not be justly described in half hearted words. A splendid sort of woman for whom description did not do -- she required an entire new form of telling and understanding just to lend to the common man the imagination, still unjust as it would be, of what magnificence she possessed. Words that men had made to look at women were only the sins of mortal men, and if he could help it, she would not fall within the confines of the simple endowment of humanity. Oh, he thought, he never figured he was the romantic.

"Good evening, Chandler." They looked at both their faces in the mirror. Happy, wry and mischievous faces. There was excitement in this happy day. She reached her hand towards his collar to straighten it again, but he pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers.

"Happy anniversary, Monica," he replied, turning around to beam down at the woman before him, still holding her hand to his lip. Deftly he placed it on his waist, took her other palm in his, and strode across the living room in the awkward devilry of a tango. She giggled and touched her nose to his in the manner which said in the subtle but blatant way she would always adopt, Oh, you suck and I love you.

He held the perfect woman in his hands and thought to himself, My, what must I have done in another life to deserve this. For he could never measure up to her in this one. The pain of inadequacy pulled at his heartstrings. A blessed man he was, but a little man in a love too big and bold for him. Fresh new feelings he knew barely of how to handle – there was so much of it that he held close to the surface, like when you feel something for the first time and know hardly what to do with it and don't know how to understand it inside, or know where you should put it. Sometimes there were feelings so brand new that you did not know how to handle them, and he was like a child holding out Love in his open palm and asking in confusion and mystification – Love? He was immature and lowly, too meager and deficient to give this woman the things a husband did. Could he really do this? It might fail, he might fail. It could end, he feared. A first year of marriage, and now the second. It was all large and frightening, and it was daunting, something terrifying but too overwhelming to really be pinpointed, but yet there it was, haunting him like a man-eating polar bear peering out from behind a tree, waiting and anticipating the point when he would fall short of everything this expected of him.

His smile faded once she looked away, pulling at her dress, running her hands down to smoothen its edge. But he put his hand on her arm and stopped her as if it in some strange way the action meant her fading away. Immediately he caught hold of her before it ever could be too late.

A whole year he had loved her. And the next, and the next, and again he would, would he not?

"I love you Mon."

She touched his collar again and smiled, and he leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. They were headed to a beautiful restaurant for a charming evening and a brilliant night. She held her cheek to his lips and waited on the moment longer than it had lasted.

This night, this night. It was wonderful, and yet, somehow there was a reality of it hurting her with its painful hint of normalcy. It was their one year anniversary and yet somehow the night was failing her expectations of it, the perfection that she demanded of it. It stung of appropriateness and properness, sending the allure of an enchanted sort of celebration to its demise. Her imagination of the evening had been misconstrued and now that she stood within it, it was not the perfection she had sought, somehow. Nothing was the matter, nothing was amiss, and yet she often strove for the best and the most of anything, this time, the conclusion of a year of love might give her. For it was laced with magical expectations and ideas of a night so special, but now, there it laid, simply, and that was all their was to it – it's reality.

Then Chandler kissed her again, suddenly, but on her lips, pulling him close to her and holding her tightly, as if he would be inept letting her go.

"Let's have a wonderful evening." He smiled and took her hand.

She always yearned for perfection, but then again while she did here was something so crude, raw and sincere, bursting with eager love, erroneously flawless.

"I love you Chandler," she said. "Happy Anniversary."


End file.
